John Denham, MP for Southampton Itchen is backing a Labour Party campaign “Day of Action” today to put pressure on David Cameron to take action on aid, tax and transparency to move towards a world free of hunger.

Mr Denham is supporting today’s Labour Party’s G8 campaign “Day of Action”, to urge local residents to sign up to the campaign by raising awareness across their constituencies.

In addition, Mr Denham is writing to constituents in Southampton bringing their attention to the issue and encouraging them to put the Government under pressure.
• On the 17th and 18th June, when David Cameron takes on the role of chairing the G8 Leaders’ Summit in Lough Erne, he has a unique opportunity to ensure that aid, tax and transparency are at the forefront of the Summit’s agenda.
• In one of the greatest injustices of this generation, an estimated one billion people go to bed hungry every night, despite there being enough food in the world to feed all seven billion of the population.
• As a result an estimated two million children die from malnutrition every year. To put it more bluntly, this equates to around 16,000 children every day, or one child every five seconds.
• According to OECD figures, developing countries lose three times more to tax havens than they receive in aid each year.

Mr Denham said:
“This is not party politics. It is our moral duty to share these facts, because there is a genuine concern that Cameron will fail to act on this incredibly important opportunity he has.
“We must mount as much pressure as we can on Cameron to ensure that aid, tax and transparency are productively discussed and most importantly, that practical action is taken by the G8 leaders in June.
“That is why we need to end tax secrecy so that companies can be held to account and corruption can be rooted out. Developing countries will never be able to lift themselves out of poverty if they cannot collect taxes to fund their own services.”